Topic:
Devon's hat-in-the-ring mining facility.

Devon's hat-in-the-ring mining facility.

As usual this will be a diorama more or less for the eventual indoor layout. Like last year I will be building a segment of the layout. This may be way over ambitious for a 30 day build we will see. I will be building a mine building, head frame, and ore bin. That is the competition entry, those three items. If time permits I will include the track and scenery. The primary structures will be made from my alotted 42" redwood 2X4. This is a 1:24 scale build. Mine building will be the winch house for the head frame. The head frame will bring the ore up to a cart that will then have a short track on a trestle to the ore bin. This will be made inside of a 36" (plus a little) diameter curve.

As you all know one of my club members and friend and LSC member Chuck Enlow passed away this year. Also another good friend Dick Whitney, an excellent modeler, passed away this year. Both of their wives were generous to me and gave me a bunch of their modeling stuff. Much of the reason for that was they had seen my work for the challenges. So I am dedicating this to my friends Chuck and Dick. I will use a great deal of the stuff I got from them in the build. This mine will be named the Enlow-Whitney mine after the two men who made the claim.

But ... it does say; " (napkins not included)" and we have accepted paper towels in that category ... so .... That is in the first section I will admit. But in the second section, how does one define "Before Jan 13th?" It is clearly before Jan 13th. If it can't be done the 1st-12th per section one, then how could you ever do it before the 13th per section 2. Maybe we need a rules clarification, lol. Trust me its all I can do to refrain from cutting my 42"s of 2X4, which is actually a 2X6X10.

This is what I have to work with. The entire thing has to fit in this 39" X38" space. And unlike my previous two builds the track has a slope. I don't think this year will be a high dollar build. Right now I think my only expense will be pink foam board. The trick is getting all of it in and over the track. Ideally there will be a "mountain ridge" on the inside of the upper left area of the loop. In my mind the mine is on one side of a mountain and a gorge on the other side (the top part of this where the layout continues). So I want to cram the mine into the lower 2/3rds of this space. In order to do that there will be some forced perspective where buildings and other stuff might be compressed in their dimensions. But this is a micro layout so thats OK as long as it feels right.

This post was edited by Devon Sinsley at January 21, 2018 12:15 PM EST ____________________________________

Question about the track, does the upper leg loop back into another module (like the napkin suggests), or stop at the mine (like your diagram seems to do, at least for me)?

If the latter, you might want to flatten out the last foot, in order to leave a car there. If the former, never mind!

Post pics Brutha!

===>Cliffy

Cliff this is one of the many designs that I have come up with for the indoor macro-micro (a very large Vic inspired micro layout). It will likely morph again especially if I try to also fit a car in this room. But the engine house I built two years ago goes in the center of the bottom loop. The snow shed goes in the lower left corner. This build will be the wing at the upper right.

Well you beat me to the punch. I'm back to square one and head-scratching.

I wanted to select my mining district on my layout to finish and use the buildings from this year's Challenge, but, so much for that idea. Now I got to come up with some other part of the layout that might work with this Challenge.

The good news is it isn't difficult to find unfinished areas on my layout, so I'll be pulling for you to pull this mine project off and I'll be following your every step with interest.